


Until I Fall Away

by Sineala



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: 616 Day, Avengers Vol. 4 (2010), Cap_Ironman Bingo, Community: cap_ironman, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, Presumed Dead, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: Tensions are high between Steve and Tony after Steve finds out the Illuminati exist. He says a few things to Tony that he probably shouldn't have... and he doesn't say a few things to Tony that he probably should have. Then Zeke Stane murders Tony, and Steve can no longer say any of it. But there's a funny thing about superheroes: sometimes they get second chances.





	Until I Fall Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicasen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen/gifts).



> So I asked magicasen what trope she wanted for her birthday that I could write in under 1000 words, and she said v4, Commander Rogers era, after the Illuminati thing, Tony is presumed dead. So I lied a little about it being a thousand words, and also my hand slipped and I might have killed Tony a little harder than "presumed," but, you know, superheroes, whatever, he's gonna be okay. (Hence the CNTW; I never know what to do about character death for superheroes.)
> 
> Happy birthday, magicasen! You're awesome! It's still June 6 where I am! I hope this still counts! I hope this is the miserable present you wanted!
> 
> (I'm not actually sure what Zeke Stane is doing at this point in canon and I wrote this in, like, four hours, and I wasn't about to reread Fraction to find out. So let's just say he could be torturing Tony.)
> 
> This is for my Cap-IM Bingo card, the square "presumed dead," because conveniently I already had this one waiting. This is also for 616 Day, even though I feel like every day in my house is 616 Day.
> 
> Thanks to Kiyaar for beta!

Steve never has any restraint around Tony. 

Maybe that's not a fair statement. Maybe it hasn't always been true. Maybe when they were young and innocent, they behaved like something remotely approaching normal people, normal friends. They were decorous, maybe. But at some point, Tony figured out how to slip a knife between Steve's ribs -- metaphorically -- and Steve figured out he could punch back -- literally.

This is where they are now. This is where they were yesterday:

They were standing in the Himalayas, surrounded by what felt like every Avenger they'd ever known. It probably hadn't been the best place to hold a screaming fight. But he'd found out that Tony had had the Infinity Gems, had been Illuminati, had been _lying to him_ \-- and, well, screaming was a better choice when the only other option was trying to break Tony's face open again.

Maybe Steve's learned something.

Maybe not.

And Tony just stared at him and said _I'm sorry your feelings are hurt_ and Steve breathed in hard and it wasn't the cold, it wasn't the snow, it was Tony cutting straight to the heart of it again, in public, in front of everyone, and how dare he--

_You think this is about my feelings?_ Steve blustered.

And Tony -- of course, of fucking _course_ \-- just looked at him with those impassive, glowing eyes, faceplate down, and said, _This part here, yes._

He knew. He always fucking knew. Tony had sliced an entire year out of his head and he _still_ knew.

It's humiliating.

But that's only half the problem. It's not just anger, with Tony. It's everything. He has no control. After they took down the Hood, after Steve brought Red Hulk in, Tony pulled him to one side and quietly pressed the Time Gem into his hand.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to say this wasn't for him.

But Tony just looked at him and smiled, and he did everything Tony asked when Tony looked at him like that, didn't he?

"Okay," Steve said. "But we're talking about this, you and me. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Tony agreed.

Steve could feel the anger under his skin. It formed a barrier between them, like stone, like metal, like vibranium. Impermeable.

They weren't ever going to talk their way back into being friends. No matter what apologies they made, the only thing they could do was keep hurting each other.

And now it's tomorrow, and Tony hasn't even called.

Oh, it's not like he was sitting by the phone, mooning like a teenager -- but he can't deny that he feels some disappointment. Tony's always been like this. Since the beginning of the Avengers, other things have always come first, unless they were having an actual emergency. The Avengers used to have to suspend him for missing weekly meetings.

So he's not surprised, really, when Tony doesn't come talk to him.

And then, of course, it's 2300 and his team gets a callout -- because supervillains can't wait until the goddamn morning -- and he's in the Quincarrier with Natasha and Sharon, wheels up in five, running through the preflight checklist as fast as he can.

A phone rings in his belt pouch, and Jesus Christ, of all the fucking times.

"Take it," Natasha says, and she tugs on Steve's shoulder to urge him up out of the pilot's seat before taking his place. "You've got four minutes, thirty seconds."

So Steve fishes the phone -- a Stark product, naturally, sleek and beautiful and goddamn irresistible like everything Tony has ever built, like Tony himself -- out of his belt pouch. And, yeah, the number on it comes up as STARK RESILIENT.

Of course Tony would pick right fucking now.

"Look," Steve snaps, as he punches the answer button with his thumb. "When I said I wanted to talk to you _today_ , Tony, I meant _at a time regular people are awake_. Eleven p.m. is not cutting it."

There's silence down the line, and Steve wishes he could take it back. Yes, Tony lied to everyone -- to _him_ \-- and, yes, he's still angry, but this is Tony reaching out. He should try. He has to learn to put the weapons down.

Unfortunately, Commander Rogers of the Secret Avengers now carries a gun, and not a shield.

"This isn't Tony," says Pepper. Her voice is thick with an emotion Steve can't quite identify, and shame curdles in his gut.

It's not like he said anything that he wouldn't have said in front of other people -- hell, he'd said worse in front of the entire team yesterday -- but it feels like some boundary is being transgressed, like he's been found out, caught in flagrante delicto. Their fights are always too intimate. He's spent a good decade trying not to think about how sometimes fighting with Tony feels like they should have been fucking instead, or additionally.

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and realizes he's actually trying to cover his face. He realizes he's turned away so Natasha and Sharon can't see him in his disgrace. "Oh, geez," Steve mutters. "I'm sorry, Pepper. Can you tell Tony this isn't really a good time? I'm about to leave on a mission. I'll-- I'll call him back when I'm done."

There. Reconciliation. That wasn't that hard, was it? He imagines Tony sneering, saying _oh, do you want an award for being a decent human being?_

He thinks it used to be easier.

At first it sounds like the connection's cutting out, but then he figures out what it actually is: Pepper is gasping, harsh and quick breaths, and something here is wrong. Steve's body knows this, even though Steve's brain hasn't put all the pieces together yet. There's something cold in the pit of his stomach, and his fingers are starting to go numb.

"Steve," she says. "Steve, we-- you should-- I need--" She pauses and takes another ragged, terrible breath, and is she _crying_? "Can you take yourself off of that mission?"

She's never asked him this. He wonders if she's ever asked Tony this.

"I shouldn't," he says. It's the automatic, by-the-book answer, the one drilled into him even as something deep within him is starting to crack and splinter. "It's important."

"He's dead," Pepper says.

The phone falls from Steve's hand and shatters on the deck.

* * *

He abandons his team. He goes to Resilient.

He's expecting a body. He knows what kinds of shit Tony gets into. He's not calling it until he sees the body.

There's no body. There's just Pepper, crying on his shoulder.

There's a video, Pepper says. 

"You don't want to see the video," Pepper tells him. Her eyes are glassy. All the capillaries in her face are broken. "Trust me. You really don't want to see the video."

He watches the video.

Tony's chained to a wall, bare to the waist. The camera wobbles, unfocuses, refocuses, zooms in. The light of his RT is too bright, and the bottom of the screen is washed out white. It looks like Tony's been fighting; the cuffs are tight around his swollen wrists and blood streaks down his arms. Tony licks his lips, stares into the camera, and says nothing.

A man walks up to Tony.

"Zeke Stane," Pepper says. "You don't remember. You were dead."

Steve remembers Obadiah Stane. Father, maybe.

Steve doesn't know who Zeke Stane is because Steve was dead. Tony's dead now.

On the video, the room goes bright with repulsor energy. He hears Tony scream.

He shuts his eyes, but he still hears it, hears every last agonized gasp until there's silence.

When he opens his eyes, the thing that used to be Tony doesn't move. The screen goes black.

"We've got some people here at Resilient looking into it," Pepper says. "They say that so far it looks authentic. Ordinarily we'd ask SHIELD, but..."

She doesn't finish the sentence. There is no SHIELD. There is no SHIELD, because Steve was supposed to run SHIELD, but Steve didn't want to run SHIELD, so he decreed that there was none, that a solitary black-ops team could replace an entire government agency, that he knew what was best for the entire goddamn world. _The ego on you_ , he screamed at Tony, in the snow, and he didn't know he'd meant himself.

"Right," Steve says. "If there's-- if there's anything I can do--"

She looks at him, her eyes brimming with tears, and she doesn't say _you could have saved him_. But they both know.

* * *

He holds it together all the way back to New York, supersonic on a Quinjet borrowed from a team whose leader is dead. Back to Manhattan. Back to Avengers Tower, which isn't his home anymore, but he doesn't have a home, because the home Tony gave him isn't his, because Tony wasn't his and now he's gone--

But the Tower is Tony's, and that's where he wants to be.

There's still a room open for him. The room he had before Registration, kept as it was, right down to the old team photos on the dresser. He doesn't bother turning the light on. He can still see without it. There's nothing he wants to see, anyway.

Steve closes the door, makes it as far as the middle of the room, and then everything breaks. His knees give way, his legs go out from under him, and he's on the floor, and he's sobbing.

Grief has a way of putting everything else into perspective. He'd learned that when he'd lost Bucky. Every little squabble just fell away, meaningless in the face of this. He used to think about how he'd always gotten on Bucky's case about taking too many risks in the field; once, he'd guiltily, secretly wished, on one of those days, that the brass would transfer him away, somewhere safer -- and then he'd had eight years and a lifetime to remember reaching out as he fell, as Bucky fell above him.

But this time, he's not getting Tony back.

The fights were bigger, with Tony. They ripped the world apart, between them; they made their friends take sides. And Tony had been hiding the Illuminati from him since the goddamn Kree-Skrull War. But he'd take it. He'd take it all if it meant Tony got to live.

He wants to bargain. He imagines the bargain. Take everything, he'd say. Take me. I don't care what you take from me. Anything. Just bring him back. Please.

The way the world is, it's not even that unrealistic. He's met Death, after all. Some people get a chance like that. It's becoming clearer and clearer that Tony doesn't. Not this time.

So Steve doesn't get to bargain.

And the worst of it, the thing that's making him start crying again every time he starts to catch his breath -- it's that he knows what he never let himself think, about Tony. He never told Tony. He never told himself, really. And suddenly it's all he can think of, the lack, the missed opportunities, the thing he'll never have.

It would have been hard, being with Tony. Hell, it had already been hard not being with Tony. Their friendship isn't -- _wasn't_ , oh God -- easy. Not anymore.

But it would have been good.

Steve is -- was -- a coward, and now he'll never know.

Someone knocks on the door.

"Steve?" Carol says. "Steve, please, I just heard--"

"It's open," he says, miserably. He doesn't want to be alone. But he'll never have the company he wants now.

He doesn't look up. Carol awkwardly pats him on the back, and then settles down next to him, and drags him into her arms. She's crying too. Her tears drip onto his cheeks.

She doesn't say anything. She just cries with him.

At least with Carol here, Steve's not going to say the sentence _want to find out how many liters of vodka I can drink?_ Tony would be ashamed of him for wanting a wake.

"I never told him," he whispers. "Why didn't I tell him?"

Carol's breath catches in her throat. "Oh, _Steve_ ," she says, and she's crying again, crying with him.

* * *

Eventually, Carol leaves.

It's 0400, and Steve heads up to the landing pad.

In the old days, in the mansion, when he didn't know what to do, when he couldn't handle the future, he used to go to the roof. And Tony -- well, Iron Man, usually, at the time -- would follow him up, would listen to him rattle off his problems, his worries. Tony always listened. And Steve always felt better.

He's alone now.

He's ninety-three floors up. He's not suicidal. He owes too much to the world to think he could be. And at any rate, Tony has invisible -- and currently intangible -- barriers, a story or two down. They'd catch him if he jumped.

He stands in the middle of the landing pad and tilts his head at the night sky.

And then he sees it -- something's moving up there. A light. Maybe a few lights. It's no meteor. They're not in a civilian flight path, and no Quinjets are due in at this time of night.

Steve glumly considers the possibilities. Kang. Galactus. Thanos. Maybe an Annihilation Wave, for all he knows. He ought to go inside and get someone. Instead he's just standing here, waiting for the end of the world.

The lights are closer now. There's one big light, and then a few more -- four? five? --around it, and then some smears that could be more lights, but honestly his vision's kind of shot from crying for three hours.

They're coming even closer. He can make out the configuration now.

They're from Tony's armor. That's what that pattern is.

They can't be, Steve thinks, dazed. They can't be, because Tony's dead, and he saw it. He heard it. But the armor is close enough now that he can actually see it, in the floodlights from the landing pad, glimmering red and gold in the dark, dotted with dozens of repulsor nodes.

Tony lands elegantly on the edge of the platform. It can't be him. There's someone else in the suit. They're going to shoot him now.

The faceplate lifts, and then the whole helmet retracts into the body of the suit.

It's Tony.

He looks like hell, bruised and scraped, his face almost gray -- but he's alive. It's him.

Steve takes a breath, and then another breath, and there's something in him that might be hope. He can't take it. He wants to start crying again. It's all too much.

"Steve?" Tony asks. He's panting. He sounds surprised, but his face is just drawn, tired, like he's too exhausted to actually express anything he feels. "Steve, what are you doing here?"

He sounds like Tony.

"There was a video," Steve forces out, and he takes a few steps forward. "You were-- you were dead, Tony, they were killing you-- I saw it-- you were-- you were screaming-- and they--"

A few more steps, and he has Tony by the shoulders, and the armor is solid under his desperate hands, and he's holding Tony tight. Another second and the armor is gone, disappearing under Tony's skin, and he can feel Tony's body, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt. Tony wraps his arms around him. Tony's stroking his back. He can't calm down.

Tony's real.

Steve's holding him tighter and tighter, which he only realizes when Tony winces under his hands.

"Slow down for a second, Steve. Breathe." Tony says. His eyes are wide. "I didn't know they were filming. Oh, geez, Steve, I'm sorry." His voice is level, even, calm. Steve wonders if he looks as awful as he feels. "Okay, technically, yes, I was a little bit dead, but, hey, apparently I still have a healing factor left from Extremis, surprise, what do you know--"

Steve kisses him.

Tony freezes in his arms. After a second or two he starts to tremble. He tastes terrible, like blood. But he isn't pulling away.

So Steve pulls away first. Tony hadn't asked for this. Maybe Tony doesn't want this. Maybe Steve has ruined it all. The thought should probably make him panic, but there's nothing left within Steve for it, just an aching hollow of exhaustion, carved out by grief and regret. Steve's already fucked up everything else between them, so what's one more time? 

"Okay," Tony says. He says it very carefully, like he's afraid to make the wrong move here. "So that's one of those _I'm glad you're alive, pal_ kisses, right? That's a thing we're doing now? Just so I have the right idea."

Steve takes a shaking breath.

He gets to make a bargain now.

There's a look in Tony's eyes now, the barest glimmer of hope.

"That one might have been, yeah," Steve says, quietly, but he keeps talking before Tony's face falls too far. He knows how Tony feels, now. "This one's not, though."

When he kisses Tony again, this time Tony kisses him back, long and lingering and soft.

"We're going to talk," Tony says, against his lips. "We're going to talk about everything this time, I promise."

Tony is leaning on him now, heavily. Steve shifts a little to brace him, to get an arm under him, to put him up against his shoulder. Tony obviously still has some healing left to do. But he's alive. He's home.

Tony's here and Tony's going to be okay and-- and Steve can tell him, Steve can finally tell him everything. No more secrets. Not even from himself.

"And," Steve says, because he needs to hear Tony say it, God, he needs this, "and you're going to kiss me again, right?"

Tony smiles, bright in the darkness. "Yeah," he says. "I am. I definitely am."

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/174640407444/fic-until-i-fall-away)!


End file.
